


Night Shift

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dissociation, First Kiss, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-23 09:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10716441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: Sherlock kisses him.  Just like that.It’s swift.  It’s light.  It doesn’t linger, but it’s not quite a peck.  It’s a press of lips to the corner of his mouth, a small, quick inhalation, and then Sherlock steps back and stares at him.





	1. Night Shift

Sherlock kisses him.Just like that.

It’s swift.  It’s light.  It doesn’t linger, but it’s not quite a peck.  It’s a press of lips to the corner of his mouth, a small, quick inhalation, and then Sherlock steps back and stares at him.

John supposes he shouldn’t be shocked that it’s happened this way.  He’s been back at Baker St. ten weeks.  Sherlock has been slowly edging in, testing boundaries, observing every tiny nuance of John’s actions, reactions, habits, piecing together a story from it all, a story John knows his eyes can’t hide, much as he fights to rein in his body language, to even his breathing, to not look too long, to sound casual.

“Good-night, John.”

John remembers to breathe.  “Night.”  Almost a whisper, but there is nothing suspicious in that.  It’s late and Rosie is sound asleep upstairs.

“You’ll wake me if it gets too late tomorrow?  We have to be at the Met by 10:00.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I will.”

“Good.  Well—see you in the morning.”

John sits at the table in the lounge, fingers hovering, frozen, over the keyboard.  He watches Sherlock’s form retreat down the hall and disappear into the darkness of the bedroom beyond.  A lamp flickers on for a few minutes.  There is the soft sound of clothes being discarded, and Sherlock crawling into bed, and the light goes out again. 

The door remains open.  It’s always open.  It’s been open since the first night John ever spent under this roof.

The corner of John’s mouth tingles a little, the electric spectre of Sherlock’s fleeting touch.  His lips had been soft, and surprisingly warm.  His breath had smelled of jasmine rice and tea.

John gets to his feet.  He stares at the velvet-black slice of darkness beyond Sherlock’s bedroom door.  He sits again. 

There is a rustle of sheets as Sherlock shifts a little.  It always takes him a little while to settle.  It seems strange, suddenly, that he knows this.  But then, why shouldn’t he?

John is at the bedroom door.  “Sherlock?”

“John?”

“You okay?”  John doesn’t remember getting up, or walking down the hall.  He’s just there.  Perhaps it’s better that way.

“Yes.  Why?”

“Dunno…  Just checking.  You sounded restless.”

“No.  Just settling.”

“Ahh…”  And now it’s awkward, and he doesn’t know how to walk away, so he simply stands there on the brink, the borderland between what they’ve been and what they might be.

“Do you want to come in?”  And there it is, Sherlock extending an invitation that if rejected, will never be offered again.  John knows this.  He knows it like he knew Sherlock was still alive those two long years.  he knows it like he knew he was making a mistake even as his wedding vows were leaving his lips.  He knows it like he knew three months ago that he would either be the death or the making of Sherlock Holmes.  There had been a choice to make then too.  He’s still not sure if he made the right one.  He’s still not sure if it was his choice at all, at the time.

But this choice is his.

“Yeah.  That okay?”

“Yes.”

He’s in Sherlock’s bed. 

In.  Sherlock’s.  Bed. 

He’s in pants and a vest and he’s in Sherlock’s bed, and he doesn’t remember stripping, or getting in.  He knows what his therapist would say.  He ignores it.  He’s in Sherlock’s bed.  He’s made a choice.  He’s made the right choice.  He’s lying on his back, and Sherlock is curled onto his side, facing him.  He can feel Sherlock’s eyes on him in the dark, trying desperately to deduce the invisible. 

“We shouldn’t do anything tonight.”

“What?”

“Physical.  We shouldn’t.  Not tonight.  Let it settle.”

John doesn’t say anything.  Denials would be lies.  He’s tired of lies.  “Yeah.  Okay.”

“Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re doing that thing where you’ve gone from point A to point C and you can’t recall B.”

 _Leave it to bloody Sherlock…_   “How do you know?”

“Your breathing changes, and if you reply to me your voice is different.”

“Oh.”

The nighttime quiet of the flat settles around them.  Someone flushes a toilet next door.  The wall clock ticks loudly in the kitchen.  John counts the seconds.  Three hundred and forty-six.

“It’s getting better, you know.”  Sherlock’s voice is careful in the way it’s only been since John moved back in.

“What is?”

“The dissociation.”

“Is it.”

“Based on my possibly biased observations—yes.”

“Why biased?”

“Because I care.”

“Care?”

“Yes.  About you.”

There’s nothing to say to this.  John knows it.  Has known it.  It’s haunted his dreams and his every decision since—since the wedding reception if he is honest.  “The two people who love and care about you most in this world”. 

Love and care.

Sherlock Holmes cares about John Watson. 

Sherlock Holmes loves John Watson.

John knows it.

Love and care.  Love and care John Watson does not deserve.  Not now, not after all that’s happened.

“Stop thinking.”

John huffs into the darkness.  “Isn’t that my line.”

“You can have it back when you need it next.  Right now it applies.  Your thinking is louder than that damn clock in the kitchen.”

John huffs again, and then swallows suddenly.  Swallows back something that feels deceptively like a sob.  Eyes shut.  Breathe.  Squeeze.  His leg twitches under the blankets, and snaps him out of it.  He sucks in a deep breath, like he’s been under water, drowning.  “I don’t know how to do this.”  Words tumbling one atop the other, a desperate rush, tight, and hot, and needful.

“Then let me.”

John shivers, and lets out a sigh.  _Relief?_ Something lifts off of him—something heavy, thick.

“Go to sleep, John.  There’s plenty of time now, and you’ve not been sleeping.  Sleep.”

“Yeah—Yeah, okay.”

 

…

 

“ _John…_ ”

Light (bright) diffused pink through closed lids.  A hand, large and warm on his shoulder.  And—coffee.  Someone’s made coffee.

Sherlock. 

John cracks an eyelid open. 

Sherlock smiles down at him.  “We have to leave in an hour.  You should get up.”

“What time’s it?”

“8:00.  You slept a full 8 hours.  Well done.  Now get up and eat.  We already taxed Greg’s patience last night, and I don’t need a lecture first thing.”

“Right.”  

Sherlock’s already left.  

John can hear Rosie banging her sippy-cup against the tray of her highchair out in the kitchen.  Mrs. Hudson clucks and coos in response.  Sherlock chuckles.  

“Right.  Right.  On we go.”


	2. Paperwork

“Good of you to show up…”Greg is fond and exasperated all at once. 

“Yeah, this might have been Rosie’s fault.”

“Blaming the kid.  Nice.”  But Greg is smiling.

“She did wipe jam all over my shirt two minutes before we were headed out the door,” Sherlock explains.  John glances over on instinct, and Sherlock winks.  Winks at him.

Greg seems not to have noticed.  “I set you boys up in Conference room ‘C’.  Should take you a couple of hours.  No rushing it.  This is important.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, because it’s what he does, and Greg gives the obligatory long-suffering sigh and starts in on some new case as they follow him down the hall.

They are alone again, hunched over stacks of paperwork, muddy coffee and stale donuts on the table beside them.

“There you are.”  John’s eyes snap up to find Sherlock’s focussed, intent, warm.  He searches him and then nods down toward the half-filled out form in front of John.  “You might want to double check that.  And don’t drink the coffee.”

John does as he’s told, because he doesn’t know where to begin, how to thank Sherlock for this, for taking it all in stride.  Solid.  Sure.  A rock John can constantly break himself against, and yet still flow back ‘round again—fluid, soft.

The fluorescent tubes above the table buzz loudly, and one flickers every so once in awhile.  Sherlock’s pen scratches noisily over the incident reports.

There are words, words that stick like sand to the roof of John’s mouth, that fill his throat, and suck the oxygen from his lungs.  Things he wants to say.  Things that need saying.  But—words have always been elusive when they’re needed most.

A biro appears atop his small stack of forms. 

“Yours is running out,” Sherlock explains.

“Thanks.”

_For so much.  For everything._

“Sherlock…”

And Sherlock’s head snaps up again on instinct.  “Mm?”

“Thank you.”

He sees the moment Sherlock understands him.  The furrow of confusion between his brows smooths.  The corner of his mouth pushes up a little.  Eyes soften.  He nods.  “Anytime, John.”   He doesn’t look away until John does.

Cheeks warm.  Hands trembling.  Focus.

Sherlock finishes before him, leans back in his chair, fishes out his phone and sits in silence, browsing.

John finally sets the biro down.

“Chinese or Thai?”  Sherlock says without looking up from his phone.

“It’s only just past lunch.”

“Which you didn’t eat.  Chinese or Thai?”

“What?  Now?”

“Why not?”

There is no ‘why not’.  “Uhh, Chinese I guess.”

“Good.  Come on then.”


	3. Lunch Break

The restaurant is quiet, hushed.A liminal space between lunchtime rush and supper prep.

Sherlock pulls out John’s chair, orders for both of them in low, barely-audible Chinese the moment the waitress approaches their table.  She nods, and hurries away, returns with two glasses of water and a pot of jasmine tea, and leaves again.

John picks at the small v-shaped gouge in the red vinyl tablecloth beneath his fork.

“When are the jabs again?”

Tinny tones of guzheng drift through the cheap speaker system overhead.  He picks up the fork, jabs at the tiny hole until it’s gaping, the white flocking beneath spilling out of the wounded vinyl like blanched viscera.

“John…”

“Huh?”

“Rosie’s one-year jabs?  When are they?”

“Next week.  Wednesday at 10:30.  Why?”

“Putting it in my calendar so I don’t forget.”

“Why?  I’m taking her.”

“I know.”

The food arrives.  Steaming hot.  Not leftovers from lunch, then.  It’s good.  John eats more than he was planning to, more than he has in awhile.

“Better?”

He looks up to see Sherlock sucking orange sauce delicately off the tip of one chopstick.  He looks away.  “I was hungrier than I thought, I guess.”

“See, food _was_ a good idea.”

“Well, you’re the genius.”  It falls flat.  So much for levity.  One more thing he can’t get right.

Sherlock reaches out, picks up the tea pot and pours himself a cup.  Unperturbed.  “Quite right.  Tea?”

John glances up from his plate with a frown.  “What?”

“Tea?”  Sherlock lifts the pot and nods toward the empty cup beside John’s plate.

“Oh, um.  Yeah.  Thanks.”

They finish the rest of the meal in silence.  Always the bloody silence, stretching on for hours, miles, years between them.

“So what is this meant to be then?”

It takes John a full minute to realise that he is the one who’s spoken. 

Sherlock waits for him to look up and make eye contact before replying.  “This?”

John nods.  “Yeah.  This.”  He wags his finger back and forth in the space between them, a rift teeming with so much potential, with warmth, and quiet, and the fragrant, floral notes of untouched tea.

“It’s not _meant_ to be anything.  It is what it is.”

John sniffs back the ache in his chest, the grinding tension in his jaw.  “And what’s that?”

“You know…”

John shakes his head.  His sinuses burn.  His head aches.  “Nope.  No.  I want to hear you say it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re you.”  Short, impatient (angry?).

Sherlock’s eyes flit away from his.  He stares down at the faded linoleum for a moment.  Swallows.  Looks up again.  “Do you still love me?”

Time stops.

Lips part.  No words.  John stops breathing.

Sherlock holds his gaze: steady, strong, expectant. 

It’s a fair question.  It’s a good questions.  It deserves an answer.

“Yes.”

Sherlock sucks in a quavering breath, settles again, and then nods.  “And I love you.  So—where we go from here—it’s where we were always going.  We just got—delayed for awhile.”

The waitress chooses this moment to reappear.  Sherlock turns and chats with her in the shared language John doesn’t understand while he fishes around for his card.  He smiles.  She laughs and scurries off again. 

“Just stay, John.  Everything else—we’ll figure it out.”

“Love is never enough.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing I find you tolerable, on top of everything else.”

John blinks.

Sherlock grins crookedly.

John laughs, and Sherlock joins in with a soft chuckle.

Tension breaks.  John can breathe again.  “Listen, I um, I’ve never once managed to make something like this work.  Not once.  Not sure it’s in my DNA, actually.  And uh…  That’s what scares me, because this—“  He motions between them again.  “This is too important to mess up.”

Sherlock nods.  “What would help?”

John sits back a little, crooked half-smile.  “What?”

“What can I do?”

“Do?”

“To help make this easier for you.”

John huffs, half mild disbelief, half confusion.  Do?  Hasn’t Sherlock done enough already?

No.  Unfair.

No!  Not unfair.

“Stop leaving me.”

Sherlock’s eyes have never left his.  John sees him swallow dryly.

“Life holds no guarantees, and I won’t make promises to you that I can’t keep.”

“Why not?  You have before.”

It’s a cruel thing to hurl between them in this moment, and John knows it, but Sherlock is undeterred.

“Which is precisely why I won’t again.”

John snorts bitterly, slumps back in his chair.

The waitress returns with Sherlock’s card, a receipt for him to sign.  She leaves again.

Sherlock signs, pockets the fortune cookies and breath mints that came with the bill, and gets to his feet.  He stares down at John (a small ball of tense, sour rage) with eyes that speak of something John isn’t even sure he knows what to do with.  “I promise you that as long as it is within my power, I will never leave you.”

John feels his face arrange itself into something that’s probably much too close to a sneer to be appropriate to the circumstances.    

“John, some part of you still thinks I’m a god, I think.  Or maybe you just hope I am.  But there is no benevolent god in the heavens looking out for us all.  You of all people should know that.  Nor are we reflections here on earth.  I’m a human being.  I will make mistakes.  I will hurt you.  But you have my word that I will do my best not to, and I will make it up to you if I do. 

“That’s all I can promise you in good faith.  Either it’s enough, or it isn’t. 

“You’re right.  Love isn’t enough to save you.  It’s not a miracle, a panacea, but it does make life more bearable, I think.  And choice: choosing love, choosing friendship, companionship, trust—every day, sometimes maybe every minute of every day, that can keep you sane.  It’s what I choose, John.  Your decision is up to you.”

He walks out.

John watches through the plate glass window as Sherlock walks to the edge of the curb and lifts a hand to hail a cab.  He fishes about in his pocket, seems to catch himself and pulls out again, empty handed.  Instinct.  Reaching for cigarettes (or something else) that isn’t there anymore.

John makes a choice.

Sherlock doesn’t move as John slips silently in beside him on the curb. 

The wind whipping John’s hair from it’s careful arrangement and into his eyes is cold, but the heat of Sherlock’s body warms the space between them.  John sidles closer and glances down the street.  For once Sherlock’s miraculous ability to hail cabs in a breath seems to be failing him. 

Ageing wool billows in the wind.  John can feel the scratch of Sherlock’s coat cuff trailing the back of his hand.  There is almost no one on the sidewalk, the restaurant behind them is empty, the folds of Sherlock’s coat conceal them from the view of those on the road.

He hooks two fingers around one of Sherlock’s large ones, rubs his thumb along the length, squeezes gently, holds on tight.

A cab circles the corner at the far end of the road, and Sherlock lifts his free hand again.  His thumb strokes the length of John’s small, cold fingers in recognition, acceptance.  The cab approaches, slows, pulls next to the curb, and Sherlock lets go, opens the cab door for John.  “Home?”

“Yeah.  Home.”


	4. Retirement

“Well, that’s me off.I’m totally knackered.”

“Mm…?”  Sherlock’s eyes never leave the microscope in front of him.

“Bed.”

“Ahh…  Fine.”

It is what it is.  They are what they’ve always been.  John glances quickly down the hall at the dark of Sherlock’s empty bedroom.  “Night then.”

“Yes.”

The only sound in the room at top of the house is Rosie’s soft, even breathing.  She’s a good sleeper now she’s getting older.  John is grateful.  He strips to pants and a t-shirt, climbs under the covers, sleeps almost the moment his head hits the pillow.

…

It’s still dark.  Rosie is still breathing.  So is someone else.  Hung halfway between dream and lucidity, John’s hand inches toward the top drawer of his nightstand.

“It’s me.”  Barely a whisper.  Sherlock—perched like Poe’s raven, lower back pressed against the footboard, knees tucked up under his chin.

“Jesus…  What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Watching.”

“Uh—yeah.  That’s fairly obvious.  Why?”

A shrug.  A small shake of the head.  “I’ll go.”

“No.  I—I didn’t mean…”  ( _Are you asking him to stay?_ )

“Are you asking me to stay?”

Something flutters in John’s chest, races lower, spreads.

“If you want.”

Sherlock unfurls, long limbs pale, naked, glowing in the meagre light shining in from the street.  Pants and that’s all.  All the way at the top of the house, perched at the end of John’s bed, in the middle of the night, during the coldest June on record, and he’s only in pants.

He’s ice when he slips beneath the covers, a foot trailing down John’s shin, the backs of fingers grazing John’s arm as he tries to settle.

John hisses at the contact.  “Christ, Sherlock.  How long have you been sitting there?”

“Not sure.”  Finally he stills.  “I finished in the kitchen and you were gone.”

“Well, I did say good-night.  Do you not remember that?”

“Oh…  No.”

Silence settles.

The bed here is a double, smaller than the one a floor below.  They’re close.  They’re close enough that John can feel Sherlock’s cold curling out to borrow his warmth, close enough he can feel his breath against his face, and the way Sherlock’s fingers toy with the edge of the pillow case.

“You okay?”

“Are you?”

“Yeah.  I was sleeping.”

“Up here.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my room?”

Seconds stretch into minutes.  It starts to rain, large heavy drops that patter against the glass of the bedroom’s lone window.

“So is the one downstairs.”  Sherlock worries the top of the sheet pooled on the mattress between them, but when John’s hand folds over his, he stills instantly and swallows (anxiously?) in the close half-dark. 

John trails a finger absently over the back of his hand.  “I don’t know how to do this.  I told you.”

“I know.  I heard you.  But—the invitation last night—it was meant to be a standing arrangement—if you want it.”

“Ok.”

Sherlock’s fingers stir beneath his, hand turning, curling, until John’s hand is nested snugly in Sherlock’s cool palm; sheltered beneath the cage of his fingers.  “It doesn’t matter to me, John—whether you know how to do this or not.  You seem to be under the impression that I do know.  You would be mistaken.  All of this is new.”

“Oh.”

Somewhere out on Marylebone Road a siren wails into the night.  Rosie stirs and whimpers in her sleep before settling again.  Sherlock sighs.  “Ask.”

“What?”

“I can hear you thinking.  Whatever it is, you can ask.”

John feels the familiar tension unfurl in his chest, grip his throat.  His breath sticks in his lungs.  His eyes prick.  “Yeah, um…  I’m not sure I can, actually.”

Sherlock’s hand tightens slightly around his.  “Why?”

Instinct is to flee, but the bed is pushed up against the wall, and Sherlock is now on the side closest to the door.  John would have to scramble over him to leave.  Instinct is to hide, but instinct’s brought him nothing but trouble over the years.

“Why?”  Sherlock repeats—softer still.

“Because—“  he swallows tightly, embarrassed at how his voice breaks.  “Because I don’t know why I want to know.  I don’t know what I think I’ll do with the stuff if I did know it.”

“Perhaps you don’t need to know…  Just ask.”

John is trembling.  He can feel it.  He knows Sherlock can feel it.  He opens his mouth, but there’s nothing.  He feels sick.

Sherlock’s hand tightens around his for a moment.  “I’ve never been in love.”

“What…?”

“I’ve never been in love—before you.”

‘ _in_ love’?

“Oh, there was an infatuation, an obsession or two.  But—it was never requited, and—I’ve no idea how to do this either, John, save to try and follow my heart and try to retain some semblance of common sense.  I think we know one another well enough by now, that it’s not a complete shot in the dark.”

_‘in love…’_

“And since it clearly seems to hold some sort of fascination for you—no, I have never been sexually intimate with another person.  No, I am not, as you seem to think, completely averse to exploring the idea, but I have no interest, whatsoever, in fucking just to fuck.”

The bark of a laugh that escapes John’s throat surprises even him.  It’s loud in the quiet room.  Rosie sneezes.  Sherlock goes tense beside him, the grip of his hand around John’s loosening. 

John needs to say something.  Anything… 

“You’re in love with me?”

“Sorry?” 

“I—I just mean.  I didn’t think you…”

Sherlock’s body inches slightly away from his.  “At the restaurant this afternoon you said…”

“I love you.”

“Yes.”

“Not exactly the same thing as ‘in love’.”

“Isn’t it.”  Sherlock is closing up, withdrawing. 

John is going to ruin it, all of it, if he doesn’t do something.  “Sorry.  Sorry, I…”  He exhales through pursed lips.  He feels dizzy.  “I didn’t mean…”

“Are you _in_ love with me, then?”

“I…”

“And to be clear, an answer in the affirmative doesn’t mean that sexual intimacy will be a requirement—unless you want it to be.”

_Oh._

_oh_

“I uh…  Yeah.  I do.  I love you.  I’m _in_ love with you.”

The tension instantly drains from Sherlock’s body.  “Good.  Right.  Well then.  That’s—that’s good.”

John’s hand is a tight fist in Sherlock’s palm.  When he let’s go, his knuckles ache. 

The movement is experimental at first, fingers inching around the side of Sherlock’s palm.  Sherlock responds, strokes the top of his knuckles with his thumb.  Hand turning.  Fingers meshed.  Sherlock melts at the gesture, John draws closer.  “I don’t want this.  I don’t want to be like this with you.”

Sherlock’s fingers go lax between his, begin to draw away.

“No!”  John holds on tight.  “I mean—hesitant, stumbling, getting everything wrong.”

Sherlock relaxes again.  “You’re fine.”

“No.  I’m not.”

“You’re here.”

“Yeah.”

“You love me.”

The words still light somewhere deep in John, warming a part of him he’d thought had died before it ever truly had the chance to live.  But it expands now, fills his chest with something that feels a little like safety, a little like the home he’s always dreamed of, but has never really known.

“Yeah…”  He’s pleased.  He can hear it in his own voice.  The fondness, the sincerity.   Finally something real, something right.

“You want me.”  Pitched low, quiet, intimate.  Breath against John’s lips.  Fire in his veins.  Electricity crackling over his skin like a late summer storm.

John nods.  He knows Sherlock feels it.  The fringe brushing his forehead mingles with Sherlock’s.  So close.  So close…

Forehead to forehead.  Sherlock’s nose brushes along one side of John’s, nuzzles his cheek, lips hovering so that John can taste Sherlock’s breath on his tongue.  Sherlock is remarkably calm.  John’s heart runs frantic in his chest.

When Sherlock’s lips find John’s, press there, when his eyelids flutter shut, eyelashes fanning against John’s, everything slows down, narrows in on that one sensation.  Unlike the night before in the lounge, John has time to savour it.  Perhaps it is the dark, the quiet, nothing else competing with his senses, but every second feels alive, prickling with sensation and possibility.

It’s a tender kiss.  Neither forceful or tentative.  It’s intentional.  A decision.  It is simultaneously the most chaste, and the most electric kiss of John’s life.  He turns into it, accepts it, offers one of his own in return.  And when Sherlock opens to him, welcomes him in, he knows—he knows without a shadow of a doubt that this was always meant to happen between them, that there is nothing, nothing in heaven or on earth he would not give to this man.  This—this is what has been missing—this knowing, this claiming, this belonging.


End file.
